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I completely disagree with those folks on policy, but are they wrong on the facts? Activists target an organization for not having a proportional representatio

I completely disagree with those folks on policy, but are they wrong on the facts? Activists target an organization for not having a proportional representation of Group X, and claim this must be solely due to racism, misogyny, white supremacy, and so on. The most effective argument against this claim is that the skill distribution of Group X is different. Activists claim this argument is itself racist or white supremacist, so the only people making it publicly are fringe racists. There is plenty of peer-reviewed research suggesting IQ differences between racial or ethnic groups. Cultures are different too. Groups of people differ, on average, in every other aspect, why would intelligence be any different? Does this mean we should deport all immigrants, refuse to interview certain races, judge people collectively rather than as individuals, speak hatefully about them, or bar them from our neighborhoods? Of course not. Does this mean only high IQ people are valuable and deserving of respect? No way. Every human deserves dignity and equal treatment. Does this mean I'm a white supremacist or misogynist? I'm a woman from a WASP family. I used to work as a quant, a perfectly meritocratic job: Either your ideas made money or they didn't. The market doesn't know or care what color your skin is, which gender you prefer dating, or what's between your legs. My best colleagues weren't the country club elite. They were disproportionately Eastern European Jewish, Chinese, and Indian immigrants. And when you look at the data, those are the groups that perform best on standardized tests, on average. People from my background are pretty average in that regard, nothing to get supremacist about.

api 8y ago
Rational arguments like yours are not what I'm talking about. When I say fascist/totalitarian/neo-Nazi ideology, I mean exactly that and nothing short of that. I do have some issues with what you wrote. My first problem is with IQ tests in general. Psychology is a soft science. It's recently been revealed to be even softer than we thought. The replication crisis in psychology and other soft sciences has made me very skeptical of science that's not hard enough to be tied immediately down to physics, math, and logic. In softer sciences the beliefs of the researchers seem to have a disturbing amount of effect on the outcome. My second and larger problem is that racism and sexism are extremely common. Years ago I would not have said that, but the recent outpouring of overt hard-core racism and misogyny has convinced me that the activists were right. Either a huge number of formerly not-racist and not-misogynist people suddenly underwent a mass conversion, or the taboo on openly discussing these topics was broken on social media and people suddenly started saying what they really thought. I lean toward the latter, since the explosion of this stuff was just so fast and so extreme. Given that huge numbers of people are racist and sexist, it's extremely hard to untangle any biological a priori differences from outcomes owing to prejudice. Personally I think both you and the activists are right in that both causes are in play, but the only way to find out what percentage is due to what is probably to attack prejudice as a potential cause and then see what residual remains. Prejudice is easier to address than genetic differences since ideas are not encoded in DNA and we don't really have the technology (yet?) to boost intelligence physically either through genetic engineering or augmentation. I do not personally support heavy-handed imposition of quotas as advocated by some activists, but I do think something ought to be done. Again I wouldn't have said that years ago, but the explosion of racism and misogyny on social media changed my mind significantly on this issue. I've been driven a lot further to the left on numerous issues in recent years from being just so shocked and appalled at ideas that are apparently much more common out there than I would have thought. I thought that stuff was dead.
- steveeq1 8y ago
  >Rational arguments like yours are not what I'm talking about. When I say fascist/totalitarian/neo-Nazi ideology, I mean exactly that and nothing short of that. But I've been in tech all my life and I haven't experienced any neo-nazi ideology within it. Neither have any of my friends. Sure you're not exaggerating?
  - api 8y ago
    Nope. I do have to add though that all human experiences suffer from the curse of small sample size. I guess a more rational takeaway from my comments would be that the liberal bias in tech is not as universal as some people would think, and that the extreme hard right does have a presence in tech.
    - steveeq1 8y ago
      That's why it's hard for me to take your claim seriously, your sample size is too small. And while mysogyny, sexism, racism, and even hardcore violence "exists" in tech, it is FAR more prevalent in hip hop circles ( http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/ http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/ ). So you're going to be just as hard about this with rappers, right?
      - api 8y ago
        I was responding to the claim that tech exclusively leans progressive and offering my own observations and experiences to the contrary. As for rappers-- you're right, but rap doesn't have a progressive public image at least insofar as womens' issues are concerned. As far as I can remember the rap scene has always been criticized as full of misogyny.
        steveeq1 8y ago
        Well, that's an strawman argument then. Nothing EXCLUSIVELY leans in any ONE direction, you can always find examples to the contrary if you look hard enough. But the claim that tech circles, particularly in silicon valley, leans progressive on social issues in any "by-and-large" way is a true statement.

api 8y ago

Rational arguments like yours are not what I'm talking about. When I say fascist/totalitarian/neo-Nazi ideology, I mean exactly that and nothing short of that. I do have some issues with what you wrote. My first problem is with IQ tests in general. Psychology is a soft science. It's recently been revealed to be even softer than we thought. The replication crisis in psychology and other soft sciences has made me very skeptical of science that's not hard enough to be tied immediately down to physics, math, and logic. In softer sciences the beliefs of the researchers seem to have a disturbing amount of effect on the outcome. My second and larger problem is that racism and sexism are extremely common. Years ago I would not have said that, but the recent outpouring of overt hard-core racism and misogyny has convinced me that the activists were right. Either a huge number of formerly not-racist and not-misogynist people suddenly underwent a mass conversion, or the taboo on openly discussing these topics was broken on social media and people suddenly started saying what they really thought. I lean toward the latter, since the explosion of this stuff was just so fast and so extreme. Given that huge numbers of people are racist and sexist, it's extremely hard to untangle any biological a priori differences from outcomes owing to prejudice. Personally I think both you and the activists are right in that both causes are in play, but the only way to find out what percentage is due to what is probably to attack prejudice as a potential cause and then see what residual remains. Prejudice is easier to address than genetic differences since ideas are not encoded in DNA and we don't really have the technology (yet?) to boost intelligence physically either through genetic engineering or augmentation. I do not personally support heavy-handed imposition of quotas as advocated by some activists, but I do think something ought to be done. Again I wouldn't have said that years ago, but the explosion of racism and misogyny on social media changed my mind significantly on this issue. I've been driven a lot further to the left on numerous issues in recent years from being just so shocked and appalled at ideas that are apparently much more common out there than I would have thought. I thought that stuff was dead.

steveeq1 8y ago
>Rational arguments like yours are not what I'm talking about. When I say fascist/totalitarian/neo-Nazi ideology, I mean exactly that and nothing short of that. But I've been in tech all my life and I haven't experienced any neo-nazi ideology within it. Neither have any of my friends. Sure you're not exaggerating?
- api 8y ago
  Nope. I do have to add though that all human experiences suffer from the curse of small sample size. I guess a more rational takeaway from my comments would be that the liberal bias in tech is not as universal as some people would think, and that the extreme hard right does have a presence in tech.
  - steveeq1 8y ago
    That's why it's hard for me to take your claim seriously, your sample size is too small. And while mysogyny, sexism, racism, and even hardcore violence "exists" in tech, it is FAR more prevalent in hip hop circles ( http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/ http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/ ). So you're going to be just as hard about this with rappers, right?
    - api 8y ago
      I was responding to the claim that tech exclusively leans progressive and offering my own observations and experiences to the contrary. As for rappers-- you're right, but rap doesn't have a progressive public image at least insofar as womens' issues are concerned. As far as I can remember the rap scene has always been criticized as full of misogyny.
      - steveeq1 8y ago
        Well, that's an strawman argument then. Nothing EXCLUSIVELY leans in any ONE direction, you can always find examples to the contrary if you look hard enough. But the claim that tech circles, particularly in silicon valley, leans progressive on social issues in any "by-and-large" way is a true statement.